


idée fixe

by sapphicish



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, kaz has dreams about marie and absolutely hates it, references to canonical child abuse, yes it's kaz's shitty dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 05:56:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19419847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: “You look terrible, Karen,” Marie said conversationally to her in the hall that morning. She sounded a little amused, which made Kaz want to punch her, but not that judgmental, which also made Kaz want to punch her. Everything made Kaz want to punch her.





	idée fixe

**Author's Note:**

> wentworth is about obsession and i am obsessed with that

All of Kaz's long-held philosophies always went to shit when she saw Marie. 

All of her rules regarding herself, regarding others – it all disappeared. There was the one about wanting to put her hands around Marie's throat and squeeze, and the one about wanting to push her down a deep, dark hole and bury her in it, and the one about wanting to shiv her in the showers, in the hallway, in the goddamn dining room. Anywhere. Every time she saw her face, smiling and fond and gentle in all of the worst ways around Allie, Kaz wanted to punch it in.

It wasn't until she had a dream about her and woke up wet that she realized with horror that those weren't the worst things she'd ever imagined doing to Marie.

 _With_ Marie.

Kaz cried that night, and for several nights after.

The dreams were long and drawn-out and she only ever realized what they were about when she woke up wet, with memories of strange flashes of color and light and hands on her body. She didn't have dreams like that – she'd never had dreams like that, not really, and to have them for the first time and have them be about Marie Winter of all people made her want to scream at the top of her lungs.

It would be defiant and it would feel good; a long, loud _no_ from the deep pit inside her chest, so that everyone knew that she didn't give a fuck what these dreams said about her. They were just dreams. They weren't real. Dreams were fucked all the time, that didn't make you the guilty party. It couldn't.

Even dreaming about her father had never sent her reeling like this, if only because she was used to it, if only because it happened time and time again around a certain day of every year like his ghost was coming back to make her life hell all over again and that made her want to scream, too, but somehow this was almost worse.

Somehow, dreaming about Marie Winter and waking up still thinking about the sensation of their mouths pressed together was so much worse than anything she could have ever imagined in reality.

From the first day she learned of Marie's existence to the first day she saw her to now, she'd hated her guts. The dreams didn't change that. It felt more like they were making it worse, filling her with a horrible, blazing fire whenever she saw Marie in the halls, her arm draped around Allie's waist. Sometimes she wouldn't even look at Kaz as they passed and that was the worst, the idea that Marie didn't even understand how much she loathed her, the idea that she remained ignorant while Kaz had to suffer in every possible way over her.

Kaz stopped sleeping.

It made things worse. She laid awake trying not to think about the dreams only to end up thinking about them more, and in the dark when she blinked she saw Marie's face, heard her voice mocking her, _dreaming about little old me, Karen?_ Karen. Karen. It made her sick. Even in her head Marie wouldn't call her the name that she wanted to be called by everyone when she really wanted it, when she really needed it. Her mind couldn't give her that. Her mind couldn't imagine a world in which Marie wasn't someone to hate.

She didn't know if that was what made her angry the most, or if it was just some small part of it all.

When she did drift off on accident, sometimes she didn't dream. Sometimes she was so afraid that she would that she snapped awake again, panting, clutching at her wrists until her skin turned red. Or she would dream, and Marie's voice was soft, and her lips were soft, and her hands were soft, and she smelled the same way she always smelled, even in here, that awful perfume Kaz hated and the prison shampoo, and Kaz woke up sick, her head spinning.

She only actually threw up once.

Once, when the dream went deeper, when dream-Marie talked for once. _Come on, Karen,_ Marie murmured to her gently, fingers at her spine, at the back of her neck, in her hair. _Just relax. Good girl._

 _Stop,_ she said in the dream, which was the first time she'd ever done so. _Stop._

Marie did, which was maybe the more surprising part of all of it – no, definitely the more surprising part. _What's wrong,_ she said, her mouth moving in the dark, wet and slick and red. _Are you all right? Karen? You're shaking, poor thing...oh, sweetheart, come here...it's okay...it's all right, don't be upset, Kaz...Kaz..._

Kaz's eyes snapped open. She breathed in and out, deep and slow, staring at the ceiling, struggling to see it even though it was dark, just so she had something to focus on, her stomach turning and twisting into knots that made her curl up in a ball and press her eyes shut tight.

Then she threw the sheets back, scrambled out of the bed, and just barely made it to the toilet in time.

“You look terrible, Karen,” Marie said conversationally to her in the hall that morning. She sounded a little amused, which made Kaz want to punch her, but not that judgmental, which also made Kaz want to punch her. Everything made Kaz want to punch her.

Kaz knew she did. She'd seen herself in the mirror – she was pale and her hands had only just stopped shaking. At the sight of Marie, they started again. She tucked them into her pockets and smiled with all of her teeth. “Fuck you,” she said.

Marie clicked her tongue, touching her on the arm as she passed her on the way to the visitor's lounge. “A girl can dream, can't she?”

Marie didn't look back at her, but Kaz stared after her, the nausea rising in a swell all over again. She checked that the hall was empty and then slumped back against the wall, rolling her head back and squeezing her eyes shut, tighter and tighter until it hurt her head.

After lunch, she sat out the game between her girls and Kosta's crew, using a migraine for an excuse. It wasn't a complete lie, but she was also dead tired – and it was also Marie, who sat across the yard braiding Allie's hair as they laughed together over something. Kaz didn't want to know what it was – except she also couldn't stop thinking about it, couldn't stop focusing on that sound even over the shouting of the women as they wrestled over the ball.

It was starting to make her sick – or maybe that was the headache.

Maybe it was both.

Maybe it was herself – her fucked up mind making her nauseous with the guilt, with the anger.

She stood off the bench and moved through the yard, blocking out the sounds of her girls cheering and laughing as they scored over Kosta. She passed the table Marie and Allie were sitting at on her way there, hearing them whispering to one another. Their heads were pressed close together, but it was all she saw before she turned her back on them and went inside, feeling like she was in a daze—half-asleep, and increasingly shit in general.

The prison felt empty as she went, which was a small blessing. She wanted to get to her cell without any interruptions and she wanted to lie down. Just for a while. It was all she'd be allowed before someone came looking for her.

“I heard you weren't feeling well, Kaz,” Marie called from behind her when she was nearly there, and Kaz stopped, biting hard on the inside of her cheek. She wanted, almost, to keep going – to ignore her, to just keep walking, eyes in front. Before she could make a decision on that, the woman came up beside her, smiling and sympathetic, a perfect glowing figure in teal, the picture of plentiful comfort to offer if not for the glint in her eyes that Kaz saw when she finally lifted her head to look at her. “Such a pity. You get better soon, alright?”

Her hand brushed Kaz's shoulder in a pat, and she stepped past her, one, two, three, heading down the hall—

Kaz turned, took Marie by the shoulders, slammed her up against the wall and kissed her.

Marie's lips were predictably soft and warm and it was fucking _infuriating,_ and so was the way everything in her mind was drowned out by the feeling. She felt like she was moving on autopilot, had felt that way since she left the yard, something making her veins buzz and her skin feel warm and her head feel full, and Marie's mouth was a little open, a little sweet—

A little unresponsive.

Kaz opened her eyes, suddenly aware of everything again – the walls around them, the otherwise empty corridor, the horror that took root in her chest, the headache pounding at her skull. The look on Marie's face.

She had felt sick before, but it was nothing compared to this, here, now, facing Marie's reaction after. It was the only time she'd ever seen her look so surprised, shocked stupid into silence, and she couldn't even take the slightest bit of satisfaction in it because of what she'd done to get there.

“Oh,” Marie said, like something was dawning on her, and before she could say anything else, Kaz turned and she walked. She wasn't called back.

She felt numb from her head to her toes. She walked. Down the hall, around the corner. Down the hall, around the corner. Again and again, navigating the quickest path to her block. She stood there in the middle of the room for a while when she arrived, clenching her fists until her nails bit into her palms, shaking.

She went into her cell.

She closed the door.

She sat on the bed, dragged her pillow into her lap, brought it up to her face and screamed.

  


  


The morning after, she sat in the yard with her head down. Someone had been staring at her all day – she could feel it, and she knew who it was and hadn't looked back once. She wouldn't give Marie the satisfaction. She had given her plenty of that already. Enough to last the bitch years.

“Hey.” One of her girls leaned over next to her, nodding to something across the yard. “Wonder what that's about.”

Kaz looked up, which she knew was a mistake the moment she did it. Her eyes locked on Marie's almost immediately. Allie was nowhere to be found, but considering that she hadn't been confronted with fists and screaming in the early hours of the morning the first day after, she knew Marie hadn't told her. It was a relief, but with that relief came even more dread.

If Marie hadn't told Allie, that meant that Marie wanted something from her – or she was planning to hold it over her head.

Both would be just as bad as the other.

Marie was staring at her, as she'd expected – and smiling. When Kaz glanced at her she leaned forward on her bench and waved, the way a friend might.

Kaz swallowed. “Just more of her mind games,” she said, and knew as Marie stood and disappeared back into the prison that it was going to be a long fucking week.

  


  


She was right about that.

Her mistake followed her everywhere. The dreams had stopped, now that she had been stupid enough to do something about them, but what she did followed her like a ghost. At first it was nothing, and Kaz thought – no, _hoped_ – that would be the end of it, never mentioned again. Marie spent her usual hours with Allie and never once looked over at her in the yard; when they crossed paths in the halls, she treated her much the same as always, wrapping a protective arm around Allie's waist and leading her forward and away, and the one time they found each other in the showers, it was Kaz going in and Marie going out and neither of them so much as glanced in the other's direction.

Everything was normal.

Enough that she could almost forget.

That short peace ended with them lined up to serve themselves in the dining room a week after the fact. Marie stepped close enough that it felt suffocating when she fell in beside Kaz, reaching across to the way to fill her tray with eggs.

Kaz breathed in deep. It was a mistake – Marie's perfume flooded her senses, overbearingly sweet for her liking. It was the same perfume she wore since the day they first met, when Marie had leaned in close enough for her to smell it then too, and it had made her head just as foggy then as it did now.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Marie looked up at her, eyes wide. Confused. Perfectly innocent.

Kaz curled her fingers against her palm. “You know what I mean.”

Marie smiled. Kaz wanted to hit something. “Oh, Kaz,” she began sweetly, almost pityingly, nudging her out of the way so that she could load food onto her own tray. Kaz let her, because the alternative was to nudge back, and eventually that would escalate to broken bones and bruises, and that sort of thing would land her in the slot for a couple of weeks. She wasn't willing to risk it. Not now. Even if it would have felt _great._ “I don't want anything. I don't _need_ anything. Just knowing I'm in your thoughts, well, that's enough.”

“You aren't—“

“Look,” Marie said, voice just loud enough to consume hers, looking up from what looked like some sort of mental debate between choosing bacon or sausage, and Kaz stopped short and felt her teeth clamp down against each other with enough force that her jaw ached. “It'll be our little secret, all right?”

She stepped back after putting a bread roll on her tray, and she was still smiling as she turned her back on Kaz and went to her table.

Kaz stood there reeling, feeling like she'd been slapped in the face. It was the way she said it – like she thought what had happened had been _sweet_ and _good_ instead of the most disgusting thing Kaz had ever done – that made her head spin.

She would have preferred it if Marie had spit in her face, or hit her, or shoved her, or threatened her, or anything at all than what she'd actually did, and had been doing since the kiss—playing with her like a cat with a mouse.

For the rest of breakfast, she watched Marie across the room, her ears ringing whenever the woman laughed at something Allie said. It filled her with the same rage as it always did, watching them hang off of each other's every word, and she eventually excused herself from the table to go back to her block.

She didn't make it there. 

“Kaz!”

She turned when she was stopped by the voice halfway down the hall, swallowing a sigh that wanted to escape—along with the subsequent scream of rage building in her throat when she saw the light in Marie's eyes, spreading across her face. She was always this. Just this. Some implacable, kind-looking thing never affected by anyone or anything around her. But Kaz knew better; she had seen that perfect, careful mask ruined, seen her upset and seen her furious and knew the cold manipulation beneath like the back of her own hand. Except now Marie knew something about her too, so she was stuck.

“What?”

Marie slid up next to her in the empty hallway, easy and smooth like a snake, smiling when she looked up into her eyes. The distance was so little that Kaz could smell the shampoo in her hair, a little minty. It smelled good. She always smelled good. 

Kaz bit hard on the inside of her cheek, so she wouldn't think that again.

“Have you never kissed a woman before?” Marie asked.

Kaz opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. Not for the first time that day she felt like she'd been rolled over by a truck. No. That was the answer: no. But she'd be damned if she let Marie know that, even though she knew it was too late for that. “Fuck off, Marie.” She shoved an arm out to push her aside, turning away.

Marie took her by the arms and spun her back around, crowding her space until Kaz had no option but to back up into the wall, which she knew was Marie's exact intention. Her hands were loose and light on her wrists when they dropped down, and then they were off again, tucked in her pockets as she casually shifted to the side, leaning against the wall next to her. Kaz only realized why when a gaggle of girls led by Kosta flooded down the hall, laughing and grinning and chatting among themselves. 

For the first time in her life, Kaz was grateful for Kosta's existence.

It didn't last.

Kosta whistled, stopping short in her slinking stride to look them both up and down. “Having a little chat, dykes?” Her grin was sharp, taunting. Kaz always thought she looked like some mangy sort of wolf going after whatever raw meat it could, and she seemed like that now more than ever.

“Fuck off, Kosta,” she managed to say despite the lump in her throat, affecting a bored and snappish tone. She knew Kosta didn't believe what she'd implied when she continued down the hall, around the corner and out of sight without only a little grumbling and a rude gesture – if she did she would have lingered to poke and pry, to rub salt in the wound she didn't even know was there.

“God, she's a little irritating, isn't she?”

“You can fuck off too.”

Marie frowned – close to a pout – and she slipped close again, their hands brushing. Kaz made a reminder to herself to scrub them raw when she got back to her cell. “Don't be rude, Karen.” Her voice was a low, soft croon but it felt a little like she'd taken Kaz by the shoulders and screamed in her face with how she said it. _Karen._ A quick, unpleasant shudder ran down her spine and spread to the rest of her body.

“Don't call me that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I hate it. And you know that.”

“Yes, but _why?_ ”

“That's none of your business, is it? Now _fuck off._ ” She made to shove her again, but Marie caught her wrists. She wasn't strong, and the grip wasn't tight, and Kaz would have made to pull back, but she felt rooted to the ground, and then—before she could even think of pulling herself together—Marie glanced around to check that the hall was still devoid of anyone else, stepped closer, and kissed her.

It was just a peck on the lips, chaste like it was nothing, but it sent a jolt of electricity through her veins and she suddenly wanted to bite her hard and sharp, to sink her teeth through Marie's bottom lip, wanted to lean back and see shock or pain in her eyes, wanted that savage thrill of pleasure she got whenever she saw someone get what they deserved. At the same time, though, her head was swimming and Marie pulled back again before she could do anything at all. The cruel, flickering desire inside of her faded immediately, and she found herself standing there speechless.

“The next time you want a kiss, _Kaz,_ you just have to say so.”

Kaz felt like she was standing on uneven ground, about to slip and fall. “What are you talking about?” Her voice was faint in her ears; she couldn't imagine what she actually sounded like to Marie. Or looked like, for that matter. The thought made her feel hot with humiliation and anger, which worsened when she thought of how Marie could probably tell.

“You know.” Marie's eyes flickered a little, her voice soft and hushed, her smile deliberate and slow. “I'll see you around, sweetheart. Yeah?”

She didn't wait for a response before she turned and left her alone in the hall, but Kaz didn't know if she had one in her anyway.


End file.
